


Like a Wheel

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: Rose Madder - Stephen King
Genre: Gen, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-07
Updated: 2008-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-26 15:31:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/284887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorcas doesn't like to think too much about where they've been or where they're going, but sometimes she just can't help it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Wheel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lucy Gillam (cereta)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cereta/gifts).



> Characters belong to Stephen King.
> 
> Originally posted at [Yuletide Treasure](http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/76/crazy.html).

Dorcas stands on the narrow path that circles around the silent brooding temple, trying to breathe as quietly as possible. The long years have taught her a patience she would never have imagined existed when she was as young as the woman who has just disappeared behind the hulking building. She thinks that the woman will need to learn a little patience of her own in the years to come, to survive the fits of temper and the black moods that will inevitably bubble up like some unspeakable dead creature floating to the surface of a cold dark lake.

Rosie's man has his arms wrapped around himself, staring up the hill, waiting - although he doesn't know it - for the same thing as Dorcas, for the coming of the bull.

And he comes, Norman, he comes in a rush right past them, chasing the rose-madder rag that is his wife's chiton barely visible in the darkness at the bottom of the hill, stampeding unawares past the two figures in the shadows, oblivious to them - for which fact Dorcas is infinitely gratefully.

'What happens now?' Bill asks when the threat has passed, but Dorcas can't tell him any more than she can tell him what awaits the bull at the end of his long chase, though she is reasonably certain that she knows who will come out on top in this particular husband-and-wife game, and it isn't the stinking, bellowing beast that just charged past them.

Time passes, as time is wont to do. The two of them move out of the shadows and up onto the hill into the uncertain moonlight to wait with the cart, to see who will return. Dorcas can hear Rosie's fading cries as she flees, the barefoot toreador leading the bull onward, onward.

She can remember running like that once, bare feet pounding on the rough cobblestones of the City of Lud, past the silent rows of bodies swaying gently in the breeze, the god-drums beating, her heart racing, until with one final _thump_ everything had stopped. She had woken up with the wind in her face, sprawled out in the back of the cart. That had been when the cart was still new and a different pony had pulled it, but Herself had still been the one driving it. She had sensed Dorcas waking up and had turned her head to say, 'That was a close one, wasn't it?' Then her eyes had rolled up in her head and she had fallen from the buckboard, fortunately backwards so that Dorcas, lurching with the motion of the cart, could leap up and catch her just in time.

She can remember the next twenty or so minutes perfectly well; hauling at the pony's reins to halt it, laying Herself down on the bare wood of the cart, wood still fresh enough to smell of the pine-trees from which it had been cut, seeing the slow spreading stain on Herself's white dress. Wishing for one desperate moment that she had never met Herself, never set foot on this long strange path that seemed to have no beginning and no end. And then, just as fear seemed about to assert itself, a strange sort of calm had overtaken her mind and she had done what was necessary.

The dress had been ruined, and what had come out of Herself had also been ruined, but there were other dresses and other babies, oh yes. Not Herself's babies, but Dorcas's babies, and their babies, and even the ones who came out wrong were useful in their own way.

Herself had to eat sometime, after all.

Dorcas pushes the thought to the back of her mind. The world has funny ways of moving on, and who is she to question them? She's no big wheel in the turning of the world, after all. She's just a little cog, set in the right place to drive Herself on, and the baby, and to be a part of this little side-story, this extra bit of business.

Bill is still looking down the hill, and Dorcas is glad that he probably can't see much more than shadows. She can see into those shadows, although what she sees is likely not what Rosie saw when she ran down there, or what Herself saw, preceding her on that long run. No, what Dorcas can see has nothing to do with the slavery of so-called love, but a rather more literal kind of slavery. She sees the gaping maw of the temple door outlined in chains, chains that hang down over the entrance, chains that, if she were to go down there, would writhe and try to capture her.

She imagines that she can hear them jingling, even up here, calling her, but shakes her head, shaking that fantasy away. Where there are chains there may also be whips, and she does not want to think about that possibility, though the years of slavery are long done and gone and buried in the dust of the past, of time and faded memory.

Dorcas shakes her head, shaking these foolish thoughts away, and returns her attention to the path beside the temple. She can just make out a single dim shadowfigure there, too small to be Norman, too human to be Herself.

Rosie rejoins them and Dorcas can see the relief and behind it the terror in her eyes. That's the way of knowing the nature of Herself; knowing that you are safe as long as she is on your side, not knowing when she might decide that she is no longer on your side.

At last Herself rejoins them and Rosie and her man are sent home. It's only at the last second that Dorcas has to leap forward and keep Herself from attacking Rosie as well. She is strong, but Dorcas gains control and wrestles Herself down to the ground, straddling her waist, pinning down her arms as best as she can, feeling the writhe and wriggle as Herself's form shifts inside the rose-madder chiton, and at last the defeated sag as Herself's human form reasserts itself. She doesn't let go for another full two minutes, though, not until the crazy light has faded from Herself's eyes and she looks sane again, or at least as close to sane as she ever manages.

At last they both stand up, Dorcas helping Herself up, and without exchanging any words they go to the cart. The sun has set, but the moon that rises is fat and bright: Demon Moon grinning at them through the slow drift of clouds as Dorcas urges Radamanthus to start plodding onwards, down the other side of the hill away from the tumbledown temple, down towards the flatlands and the long trail towards the Outer Arc.

In the back of the cart the baby stirs and whimpers, and Herself moves to feed her. Dorcas keeps her eyes fixed forward, but she still hears the knife slide from its sheath and the low hiss as the blade draws blood. She has long since given up on thinking about whether or not they are doing the right thing about taking this child to the destiny that she knows - _thinks_ she knows - awaits her. What could possibly constitute a positive future for a baby that eats as this one does?

Dorcas has dreams sometimes, dreams of a leaping fire and a woman aflame, and, leering through the smoke, the face of this child, many years in the future. She has thought about taking the knife and cutting the baby's throat while she still can. Even as she has those thoughts she knows that she can never do it. Sometimes _ka_ is like a wheel, rolling along to its destination; sometimes it is like the wind, blowing people helpless before it; and sometimes it is like a fire, burning inside, the only fuel to keep Dorcas and Herself going. And much as she does not want to unleash this child's potential power upon the world, she wants to die even less.

Besides, she knows that even if she did try, the knife would turn on her, or her heart would choose that moment to give out, and Herself would leave her by the side of the road to be picked clean by the crows and the rats. Destiny, it is said, struggles to reassert the pattern that is meant to be, and even if Herself fell alongside Dorcas, some farmer or merchant or traveller would happen along in time to hear the baby's cries and take pity on her, little lost daughter of none, and take her on down the road.

Herself settles the baby back in her nest of blankets and climbs back onto the buckboard beside Dorcas. She says nothing, but reaches out to gently stroke the back of Dorcas's hand.

'We're really close now,' she says.

'I don't think so.'

'Oh, the wheels are many yet before we get there, but when you think of how far we've come...' Herself's voice trails off, and Dorcas knows what she is thinking about. Herself originally came from that world as well, so far as Dorcas can tell, although she was not born in the city that Rosie has found herself in. She was born in a smaller town, that much Dorcas knows, and she knows that Herself had brothers and sisters who died. Sometimes Herself wakes Dorcas in the night screaming out to her long-dead siblings to run, and when Dorcas wakes her from these dreams it has to be in the dark, because the flare of a match only sets Herself screaming even louder. Yet some part of her still seems to want to return to that world; the dark voice that she speaks in during the long slow hours between midnight and dawn tells Dorcas pensively about the rich pickings to be had in that world, and Dorcas knows that she does not mean jewellery or trinkets.

'It's been a long road,' she says instead of passing any comment about what she has really been thinking.

The look that Herself gives her indicates that she knows more or less what Dorcas is thinking anyway. 'Longer than you think. Long and long.'

'Maybe you should sleep,' Dorcas suggests.

Herself gives her a smile that stretches just a little too wide. 'You know, I think I will. Will you be all right to drive on without me?'

'Ain't I always?'

Herself nods and goes back to stretch out beside the baby. Dorcas is relieved. They have come too far together for her to be exactly scared of Herself, but she dreads the day when she tries to hold Herself back and feels those fangs sink into her own flesh.

She feels the bump and rattle as the cart's wheels at last find the stony dirt track. Radamanthus picks up his pace on the easier ground, and if she squints Dorcas can just make out the lights of a town in the distance. Not _the_ town, not the one they are bound for just yet, but one that will have other people to talk to, a hot meal and a cold drink for her who doesn't eat as Herself and the baby do, and maybe a proper bed to stretch out on for a few hours. She knows that she doesn't look old, and certainly her body doesn't _behave_ as if it is old, but her mind knows how many years have ticked by since her birth, and in her mind she feels fragile and ready to break.

But she will go on until this business is done, and dismiss the odd dreams that she has had about the baby (whose name will not be Caroline, much as Rosie may have liked it), and deliver her safely to where they have been told to take her. After that, she doesn't know, and doesn't much care either. The world is moving on, and she can only move with it.

 _Ka_.


End file.
